CyanogenMod 9 for the HP TouchPad gets nightly updates

Thought you’d seen the last of everyone’s favorite firesale mod platform? Think again. The CyanogenMod team’s Ice Cream Sandwich update for the HP TouchPad has unofficially graduated from major beta releases to nightly updates. Those with the inclination to try the latest and greatest in community-authored open source code can now flash updated ROMs every day, courtesy of the folks at TeamWin. They’re syncing the latest Alpha build with nightly addition to CyanogenMod 9’s code, added to the main branch daily, then posting them on their own. You check the download page here to see the latest files.

Technically these releases are “kangs”, independent branches of the core CyanogenMod code. Even so, CyanogenMod TouchPad developer Erik “Dalingrin” Hardesty recommends TeamWin’s ROMs for those who want quicker updates, as the official ROMs posted on the main RootzWiki thread can go weeks or months between updates. When the CM9 team updates their official version of the TouchPad ROM, TeamWin will probably synchronize the code and start their own nightly builds all over.

At the moment CM9 on the TouchPad is at Alpha .6 stage, and while impressive, isn’t really ready for “daily driver” status. There are still a few things that aren’t working correctly, including some audio and video. The camera is completely inoperative, and there are still issues with the Android Market. For the time being conservative users should stick with CyanogenMod 7 Gingerbread. A lot of these problems should be fixed soon, though: HP has given the code for its custom Android TouchPad kernel to the CyanogenMod team. That aught to help iron out the wrinkles quickly enough.